A man claiming to be a whistleblower uncovering voter fraud and corruption in Dallas County elections is actually a person of interest in an ongoing investigation into that fraud, authorities said Thursday.

Sidney Williams, 33, has been portrayed as shedding light on a mail-in ballot scheme in a series of stories on WFAA-TV this week. Williams was shown in the stories discussing secret recordings he made of conversations between him and another man, Jose Barrientos, wherein the two appeared to discuss how to commit mail-in ballot fraud.

Williams has said he came forward to ensure the integrity of the electoral process.

But Williams' role in what happened between him and Barrientos appears far more complicated to investigators and Dallas County elections officials.

Andy Chatham, the assistant district attorney leading the voter fraud investigation, confirmed that Williams and Barrientos are both persons of interest to authorities. Investigators have interviewed both, Chatham said.

Jose Barrientos, 50, has been named a person of interest in the voter fraud investigation, authorities said.

(Staff file photo)

Meanwhile, Toni Pippins-Poole, the Dallas County elections administrator, cast doubt on Williams' assertion — made on WFAA — that an employee in her office was paid $100 to $300 to aid mail-in ballot fraudsters. Williams said the tape shows that the employee would tip off Barrientos about when the absentee ballots were mailed so Barrientos could grab them off residents' doorsteps.

"This is an unsubstantiated accusation, apparently made by a person of interest in, and some level of involvement in this investigation," Pippins-Poole said in an email. Her employees were interviewed, she said, and "we have no reason to accuse anyone in the department at this time."

Williams' allegations went public this week through WFAA's stories, built largely around the secret recordings that Williams said the station paid him $2,500 to access. The station's news director said WFAA paid Williams a "licensing fee" in some amount less than $2,500.

Williams would not provide The Dallas Morning News access to the recordings but did agree to an interview Wednesday, and, over the course of four hours, made broad claims about fraud throughout Dallas government and in Grand Prairie and Irving municipal elections.

Sidney Williams, 33, is a person of interest in the Dallas County ballot fraud investigation, authorities say.

(Naomi Martin/Staff)

"It's corruption at its worst," Williams said. "Voters should have the right to decide who they actually want to vote for."

Williams, who has convictions for theft and filing a false report, described himself as a political activist. He has worked on the periphery of Dallas campaigns for years.

There are indications that significant mail-in ballot fraud did strike West Dallas and Grand Prairie in this month's municipal election. At the Dallas County district attorney's request, about 700 mail-in ballots were sequestered because they were suspected of being fraudulent. Those ballots were linked to applications that claimed assistance by a "Jose Rodriguez," a name investigators believe is fake, court records show.

This is an application for ballot by mail a friend gave Pat Stephens recently in Dallas. Stephens is among dozens of potential victims of voter fraud this election cycle in West Dallas and Grand Prairie. A suspicious man came to her door claiming to work for Dallas County and asking for her mail-in ballot. She instead demanded to see his driver's license and she took a photo of it.

(David Woo/Staff Photographer)

Williams has claimed that Barrientos is "Jose Rodriguez." He knows this, he said, because Barrientos joked in the tapes provided to WFAA that "I don't remember my name being Rodriguez but ... (laughs) You're talking to the master, bro."

In the tapes, Barrientos also said, "We got about like 700. Monica is going down, bro," referring to incumbent West Dallas City Council member Monica Alonzo. Williams asked, "700?" and Barrientos replied, "Absentees, bro."

In an interview with The News this week, Barrientos denied that he was involved in ballot fraud and called the focus on him a "witch hunt." Barrientos said Williams is the one connected to an unnamed Dallas County elections employee who both men now allege helped support mail-in ballot fraud. Barrientos also claimed that the audio Williams provided to WFAA was "cut and chopped."

"They're out there trying to pin this on me," Barrientos said. "The police — they should make sure whoever did this gets punished for it, not say, 'This guy sounds guilty, let's pin it on him, and let's go have a beer.'"

The relationship between Barrientos, 50, and Williams is unclear. Williams said they met about seven years ago working together on a Dallas City Council campaign. He said they weren't friends, and he hadn't seen Barrientos for a few years until this spring, when he received a Facebook message from a council member asking him for campaign help. He said he recorded his conversations with Barrientos once he came to believe Barrientos was stealing mail-in ballots.

Barrientos, who has photos on his Facebook page with several Dallas council members, is involved with the Dallas Green Alliance Political Action Committee. A 2015 Dallas Observer story described him as a community organizer and quoted him saying, "It's time to take back the city of Dallas from the few and give it to the many, give it to us."

Williams declined to say how he makes a living other than through "political activism." In 2007, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor theft, court records show. A judge sentenced him to 75 days in jail. Later that year, he pleaded guilty to knowingly filing a false official report in Bexar County.

Williams showed The News a contract with WFAA in which the station agreed to pay him $1,000 in exchange for exclusive use of his audiotapes. He said he had another agreement with the station for the rest of the money but declined to show that contract.

Carolyn Mungo, WFAA's executive news director, said the station paid Williams for a "licensing fee," though she said the $2,500 figure "grossly overstates" the amount, and "is not accurate."

"We do not pay for information," Mungo said in an email. "In this case, WFAA had already done its reporting. We conducted our on-camera interview. We then licensed the contents of the audio conversations as supporting documentation of information already obtained."

The WFAA stories do not disclose that the station paid Williams, who said he was not allowed to let other reporters listen to his recordings based on his agreement with WFAA.

Paying a news source a licensing fee in such a circumstance is ethically questionable and should be disclosed in the news story so viewers can understand the full context of the material, said Kelly McBride, a journalism ethicist and vice president at the Florida-based Poynter Institute for Media Studies. It could cause a host of problems, she said.

"It incentivizes the source to distort the material to make it more valuable," McBride said, adding that whistleblowers "who ask for money are most likely not motivated to rectify a system — they tend to be motivated by their own fortunes."

On Tuesday night, after the first WFAA story ran, Barrientos and Williams spoke on the phone, and Williams recorded the conversation. Williams permitted a News reporter to hear that recording because it was made after his agreement with WFAA, he said.

In the call, Barrientos used threatening language toward Williams and suggested that he and Williams worked together around mail-in, or absentee, ballots in the last election. He warned Williams that both of them could get locked up.